


Hypothermia

by hollyrowan



Category: Stiles Stilinski - Fandom, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Dead Claudia Stilinski, Episode: s03e18 Riddled, Gen, Missing Scene, Nogitsune, Nogitsune Stiles, Nogitsune Trauma, Possessed Stiles, Suicidal Thoughts, riddled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:54:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1267324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollyrowan/pseuds/hollyrowan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How did Stiles get to the coyote den, before he called Scott from his dream? </p><p>Missing scene, based on what's implied in "Riddled".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hypothermia

 

_Shivering. The first stage of hypothermia was shivering._

 

Stiles dropped the wire cutters and looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He couldn’t stop shaking. It was like the trembling that came before a panic attack, before the anxiety that stopped his breath. He stared at his hands as though he could stop it, as though he could control it.

_You’re almost done._

Almost done what?

He squinted up at the wire he'd been cutting, at the glint of metal through the frayed rubber. He just had to cut through this, and then the job would be done. That was all. He was almost done. Absently, he pulled his pyjama cuffs over his hands, tucking them under his armpits. His whole body was shaking. His breath was coming faster and faster. _I won’t,_ he thought. _I won’t._ Won’t what? He shook his head, trying to control it. He closed his eyes, forced in a breath of air.

It smelled like antiseptic cleaner. Ammonia. He thought of the chemistry closet at school, and for a moment panic stopped his heart.

He had done something wrong. What was it?

 _Mom. Lying in bed, thinner and paler all the time._ The smell was sweet and foul, like flowers mixed with ammonia… _my fault, my fault_. People dying. He pressed his hands to his face. He had to stop it, he had to stop it –- he had to stop.

_The second stage of hypothermia was stillness. You stopped shivering. It's the body’s effort to conserve energy._

 

Stiles opened his eyes and stared around him. He was crouched five feet from the frayed wire, his hands pressed to his face. He could see the dark shape of a vent nearby. A hospital air vent onto the roof. He knew where he was. He could see an electrical box near it. He blinked slowly, carefully. He looked at the wire cutters nearby. At the outline of the roof. At the electrical wire he had damaged. 

Melissa was here, downstairs. And Scott would be here tomorrow morning, picking her up after her shift, and there were other people here too, other people, innocent people. Like that mom and her baby he’d seen on the way up here. There had been an old woman, reading a book in the waiting room. And the mom… the baby was on the mom’s lap, playing with a toy. What was it, he thought, some stupid toy, a red plastic Daffy Duck. And she had her arms around him…

 _Stillness. Flowers and ammonia._  

 _You know what, screw you_ , he told the thing in his head. _Just screw you and your stupid plans._ The pain in his head stabbed at him, ground down on him. He staggered to his feet, swaying. There was a bag somewhere here full of electrical supplies… he turned frantically, saw it, kicked the wire cutters away from it. They skittered to the edge of the roof and fell away into the dark. Good _._

He stumbled over to the gym bag. A coil of copper wire gleamed inside. Stiles’s hands were shaking almost beyond use as he reached for the bag's handles. A dark voice in his mind said " _j_ _ust take the copper and..."_ he almost retched at the pain in his head, at the compulsion to take the wire and go over to the frayed… He grabbed for the handles. He lifted the heavy gym bag up, swung it back and around, back and around —let go. It landed with a thump on the ventilator roof, out of reach. Out of his reach. He breathed with relief, staggered back.

He turned, and ran for the edge of the roof.

There was a fire escape, six feet down. Stiles jumped. He landed hard on the latticed metal surface, scraping his hands as he fell forward, o _w, ow, God damn it._ He clattered down the stairs.

His jeep was in the parking lot, he knew. He remembered he had left the lights on, he had hoped the battery would die. That was okay. They would think he was here.

He turned his back on the parking lot and ran.

The woods behind the hospital swallowed him up. It was dark. His hands shook as he fumbled for his phone, _light, light,_ there. It blinked on. He turned right. Trees loomed and disappeared as he ran.

 _Scott can find me anywhere,_ he heard his own voice. _He can track me by scent. And my scent’s pungent, you know? It’s really more like a stench._ He tripped over a root. The leaf mold was cold under his feet, on his hands. He could feel the ground through the knees of his pymajas. He knew how cold it was supposed to get tonight. He stumbled up again, staggered on. _Scott could find me… Even if I was buried in a ditch, covered in fecal matter…or underground…_

There was a place he had to get to.

 

_The third stage of hypothermia was confusion. Loss of coordination, loss of understanding._

 

It could have taken him one hour or five; he had no concept of time. He stumbled through the trees endlessly. He was vaguely aware of how cold his feet were, the fact that his pyjamas felt thinner. Some part of him was talking, pleading.

He wasn't listening.

He knew he was near when he smelled it, a terrible, deathly smell. They had laid the stuff down to keep the animals away from the old coyote den. He coughed as he stumbled towards it. It filled his nostrils, blotting everything else out. His eyes were streaming as he collapsed on the frozen ground and crawled inside.

He curled up. He was crying because of the smell. That’s why he was crying.

He wanted to call Scott, anyone. He wanted Scott to come find him. Scott who would not be able to smell him through the coyote spray, who would not be able to rescue him from this, because he needed to stop Scott from rescuing him. He heard again the voice in his head. _We’ll hurt all of them, Stiles._ He was glad he was here. He curled himself into a ball around the voice, as though to hold it close, and thought of the coyote traps that were around here, the steel jaw traps. Imagine you’re trapped. Stay here, Stiles. Stay here.

Stay stopped.

 

_The fourth stage of hypothermia was sleep._

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfic I've written or posted. Please let me know what you think! Any kind of comments appreciated. :) (Is it clear enough? Is it too obtuse?).
> 
> Of course when Stiles falls asleep we all know what happens... he dreams he's waking up in the basement of Eichen House...


End file.
